


This Ain’t a Scene

by Viridian5



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Generation Gap, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 08:49:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20240101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: Schwarz is having problems hiring new operatives.





	This Ain’t a Scene

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Akira 17 for reading for me.

When Schuldig stormed into the office, Crawford looked up from his research on their next target and said, “You’re in a mood.” One didn’t even need to be psychic to see a stormy, jagged, red-black aura around him.

“I was interviewing a telepath for the expanded team needed for our upcoming mission, and ze was a massive, annoying pain in the ass,” Schuldig replied as he flopped down in a huff in the chair in front of Crawford’s desk.

“‘Ze’?” A name or a preferred pronouns thing? Crawford was still getting used to that.

“Preferred pronoun. This telepath identified as non-binary and told me that it was impossible for a powerful telepath to be anything other than non-binary, so _I_ can’t actually identify as male.”

“Ze thought this would be a good thing to tell an interviewer during a job interview?”

“I guess someone needed an ‘interview etiquette’ course. Then again, have you ever been totally blinded and consumed by the need to tell someone they’re wrong?”

“No comment.”

“Still, it was stupid. Being told that I’m not allowed to define myself--something I’ve fought for my whole life--and that I’m telepathing wrong ticked me off so I told ze that _my_ shields are strong enough to stop me from getting bleed-over, as they damned well should be, so ja, I can be male.”

“Did you tell hir about your teen years?” Crawford asked, thinking of Schuldig’s naturally androgynous look at that time and the dangerous trouble it could cause him, especially within Rosenkreuz. Actually, who knew how this person would interpret that information?

“One, like that’s even any of hir business or I need to justify this to a stranger. Two, like ze wouldn’t see it as a pathetic attempt to show that I’m down with the youth or doing the ‘In my day, we walked ten miles to school uphill barefoot through eight feet of snow’ thing.” 

“Good points.”

“Right, and I shouldn’t use the word ‘genderqueer’ because ‘queer’ is a slur that absolutely nobody should use, even if all the other words have also been used as slurs and you’ve been identifying as queer for decades. Made me sorry I hadn’t worn my ‘Queer as in “Fuck You”’ shirt today. If I say I’m a pansexual cisgender male, and queer, don’t tell me I can’t be, especially if you’re trying to get fucking _hired_ by me. But, you know, since I’m ‘old’ I’m automatically problematic anyway, as if I even care about being ‘woke’ when I kill people and destroy lives for a living. This person was interviewing for a job that involves murdering a lot of people, which I’d think would also be problematic, so why the hell was this even coming up?”

“‘Automatically’? You work hard at being problematic.” 

“Damned right. I demand the proper respect.”

“Did you kill hir?”

“Damned right I did. We needed to test potential team members for the job anyway, and ze failed. Whoever trained hir was negligent and incompetent. If ze’d survived, maybe I would’ve hired hir. Maybe.”

“But you really shouldn’t be killing people for free.”

“If you’d been the one to take all that lip from that pissant, you’d have killed hir too. Nothing of value was lost.”

“Killing hir doesn’t seem to have calmed you down any.”

“If you’re unhappy with my process, you can interview more of these people yourself. Don’t give me some guff about needing a telepath to vet the telepaths, because you’ve hired some on your own many times before.” 

“But I trust you. And you have more patience with the kids than I do.” Crawford couldn’t help himself from smirking at that.

“Bullshit. Stop pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining. I don’t see how much _less_ patience you can have than I do when I just fucking killed one.”

“It’s not my problem.”

Schuldig looked thoughtful, often a bad sign. “I’m just thinking... that used to be us on that side, fighting to get respect and rewards from elders who saw us as expendable pawns to be tortured and tossed into deadly situations.”

“We earned our way to where we are now.”

“Damned right, though part of that was us taking advantage of their complacency about us to kill them.” 

“So this is a cautionary tale for us? Good. I thought you might be getting soft.”

“Pft. I’m just as hard or soft as a situation requires. If they’d nurtured and taught their young the skills to be better, maybe they might have gained our loyalty and a skilled fighting force for themselves instead of our hatred and they might have survived.”

“Are you saying _we_ should teach--” 

“And mold to our specifications.”

“--the next generation? It sounds like it requires a lot of effort, time, and money, and we’ve already established that neither of us have much patience for young psychics.”

Shaking his head, Schuldig replied, “I don’t know. I’m thinking out loud; I haven’t fully developed the idea.” 

“Get back to me about it when you have.”

“Until then, don’t bother you with it?”

“My time is precious.”

“Jawohl, mein Führer. I’m still annoyed so I’ll be off punching something. See ya later.”

To his annoyance, Crawford couldn’t totally clear the idea out of his mind after Schuldig left. Maybe he should think more deeply about it. They _did_ have trouble finding psychics that met their standards when they needed more operatives for a job. 

Of course, if he did that and ended up instituting anything from it, he’d have to find a way to stop Schuldig from being insufferable about it.

### End


End file.
